Stairway to Heaven (Battle of the Bands VIII)
“Sounds like the Rainbooms did pretty good.” Even from her spot against the back wall of the large hall, she could easily hear the audience’s enthusiasm.
Danny smirked at Ember, and took a sip of his punch. “Yeah, I’m starting to think maybe I didn’t even need to release you.”
The ghost girl matched his smirk. “Probably not, but I appreciate it. Maybe next time we fight, I’ll go easy on you.”
“Heh, yeah, next time…” Danny chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. He certainly wasn’t going to look forward to that. “So do you know what you’re going to play next?”
“I do,” she replied simply. After a few seconds, she noticed the look on Danny’s face, and sighed. “I’d rather not say the title, thanks.”
“Aw, come on, it can’t be that bad,” he chuckled. At that, Ember moved her head toward his and whispered something into his ear, making him lose his grip on the drink he was holding. As it crashed to the ground, sending punch flying everywhere, he couldn’t help but laugh heartily at her expense. “Okay, I knew you sang about whiny stuff, but drugs too? That is too rich.”
“Says the person who knows what I just said was a slang term for drugs,” she countered, putting an end to his laughter. “And hey, my stuff is anything but whiny,” she added, folding her arms across her chest and blowing a raspberry in his direction.
“Whatever,” he replied with a roll of his eyes. “I just don’t know if singing about drugs is a very smart idea at a high school talent show, Ember,” he argued, picking up the cup he’d dropped and tossing it into a nearby trash can.
“Pfft, I doubt drugs even exist in this world. Have you looked around lately?” She asked, raising her arm and beckoning for him to look to her left, where the rest of the bands were practicing. “This place feels like one long LSD trip. It’s way too happy for my tastes.”
“And… you’d ruin that happiness by introducing the idea of drugs to them.” He facepalmed, eliciting a laugh from her.
“You know it, babypop.” Before Danny could offer up another reply, she quickly changed the subject. “So where can I get some blank sheet music?”
Danny shrugged. “No clue, why?”
“I need to write down the drums for that pink chick.” She looked over at Pinkie Pie, who was currently lugging her drum set back inside, then back to Danny. “She can improvise pretty well, but the drums are the centerpiece of my next song.”
“Uh, I guess we could ask Twilight to show us?” he guessed, looking around for the nerdy girl. It took a few moments, but he eventually spotted her chatting with Rainbow Dash over by the punch table. “I’ll be right back, Ember.”
The walk there was quick, and it was obvious that Rainbow Dash was in the midst of celebrating the Rainbooms’ performance in their first battle. “You did great, Rainbow Dash, but remember, we need to focus on the Dazzlings.”
“I know, Twilight. I’m just saying, I doubt there’s anyone that can—”
“Hey, I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Danny butted in. Rainbow Dash gave him a faux-glare, and he chuckled. “Sorry, I’m sure you were bragging about how awesome you are, right?”
“Hah! You know it!”
“What’s up, Danny?”
Turning to Twilight, he gestured towards Ember for her. “Ember needs some blank sheet music. You know where we can get some?”
“You’ll need to go to the band room, follow me,” she smiled, beginning to walk off. “Are you coming, Rainbow Dash?”
The rainbow-haired rocker shrugged, falling in line next to Danny. The walk to the room was mostly silent, and it didn’t take Twilight long to find a few blank sheets of sheet music. As she handed them to him, he smiled. “Thanks. I’m sure Ember will—” He stopped short, cut off by his ghost sense activating. “Oh, crap…”
“Um, Danny, your breath is blue again,” Rainbow Dash pointed, blank-faced.
“Uh, again?” He chuckled, pulling at his collar as the temperature in the room seemed to increase. “I’m, uh, not sure what you’re talking about.”
“That’s right… It happened in the cafeteria too!” Twilight exclaimed a little bit too giddily. “Is that a property of your world?”
“Um, I guess?” He replied nervously. “Listen, I’d love to talk,” he lied, closing his eyes and walking back towards the door, “but I’ve really gotta get these to Ember.”
“Nuh-uh,” Rainbow Dash replied, quickly running to the door and blocking his path. “You’re hiding something from us.”
Letting out a sigh, Danny saw no other choice. Ember’s next battle would be starting soon, and she’d probably raise hell if he didn’t get her what she wanted. “Alright, fine. But what I’m about to show you doesn’t leave this room, got it?”
Twilight and Rainbow simultaneously gulped, a bit nervous about what he was about to. He answered that question by focusing his energy. Taking his stance, a ring of light formed in the middle of his body. Rainbow Dash loosened up, her arms falling to her sides as she watched the ring split into many more and move across his body, changing it.
“‘Sup?”
Ember looked to her left, and nodded her head. “Hello.”
“Looks like we’ll be battling next round,” the unknown boy chuckled. “I’m looking forward to beating you.”
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Flash Sentry,” he replied.
Ember had to stifle a laugh at that name, and she grinned at him. Oh, she was so going to enjoy this. She didn’t even care if these students were under the Dazzlings’ spell; she was going to enjoy watching them fall one by one.
“Listen, Flash, I hate to break it to ya, but the only way you’re going to beat me is if I drop dead. I really don’t see that happening, though,” she joked. He didn’t get it, of course, but that was besides the point. “You’d best walk away.”
Flash fumed at that, but did as he was told. With a light chuckle, she looked back to the floor. ‘The dipstick better be back soon…’
“Wait. So you’re like, a real ghost?” Rainbow smiled widely. “You mean they’re not just made up!?”
“Not in my world. I should know, I fight them all the time,” he sighed. “I was kind of hoping to leave here without a fight. That blue breath is my ghost sense. It goes off whenever a ghost, or something ghostly, like the sirens, is around.”
“Why fight other ghosts?” Twilight tilted her head.
“Because aside from a few, they’re all out for world domination,” he explained. “In fact, Ember used to—”
“Wait! Ember is a ghost too!?”
“Crap.” He facepalmed, frustrated with himself. “Yeah. Look, I need to get this back to her, so if you don’t mind, I’ll explain when the world isn’t in danger of being taken over.”
He quickly became intangible, and flew straight through Rainbow Dash. He was half-expecting the two to chase after him, but all he heard was her exclaiming, “Whoa, that was way cool!”
The fly to Ember was quick, and he materialized next to her when nobody was looking. “Finally. You get the sheet music?”
Danny nodded, handing it over, along with a pen. “I think your opponent is already playing, so you might wanna hurry.”
“I’ve got it covered.” She grinned, beginning to write at an incredible speed.
Across the school, looking over the stage, the Dazzlings were still plotting their next move.
“This band suuuuucks,” Sonata said boredly. “When is that ghost girl gonna play?”
“I believe she’s up next,” Adagio answered. “Which is when we’ll enact our plan.”
“Which is…?”
“To convert her our cause, Aria.”
“Not to be a downer,” she began replying, making Adagio groan. Aria was always a downer. “But why would she just betray Danny?”
“She wouldn’t. Not unless we give her a reason to believe the opposite is going to happen.” She smirked. “If we can convince her that the ghost boy is going to turn on her when this is all over, there is no doubt in my mind she will help us.”
“Well it looks like she’s about to come out,” Aria pointed out, nodding towards the stage. Indeed, Flash’s song had just come to an end and his band was making their way offstage. At the same time, Pinkie Pie moved her drum set on stage, and Ember walked past Flash. The two appeared to exchange some words, no doubt a result of the spell they’d placed everyone under. “What do you think she’s gonna play?”
“I’unno, but look, that pink girl is actually using sheet music this time,” Sonata pointed out. The others looked, and she was right. “It must be a doozy, huh?”
“Well, we’ll have to wait and see if it’s a ‘doozy’, Sonata,” their leader replied, clasping her hands together in thought.
The students were a bit rowdier this time, Ember noticed. Likely a result of how hard she’d rocked the stage last time. As she walked up to the microphone, she beamed. “You guys having a good time tonight?”
A loud cheer was the crowd’s response, and Ember turned back to Pinkie Pie, giving her a thumbs up. The pink party girl gave one back, and Ember grabbed her pick, giving her guitar a couple strums as she tuned it. “This next song is called ‘Mr. Brownstone’.”
With a quick count of ‘one, two, three’, the two began playing. Ember did little more than scratch her pick against her guitar strings as Pinkie got down to business, slamming away at her drums to the notes Ember had written down for her. The result was a funky style of playing that no other band at the show had produced thus far. The crowd seemed to dig it, and Ember grinned as she grabbed her pick played a few prolonged notes.
By the time the song entered its main riff, she was deep in her own world, consumed by the cheering of the many students. As quickly as the riff had started, though, it came to a quick end, replaced by a funk rock style of guitar that perfectly embodied the subject of the original song. She began to sing in a somewhat monotone voice.
“I get up around seven,
Get outta bed around nine,
And I don’t worry about nothin’, no,
‘Cause worrying’s a waste of my… time.”
“She’s doing pretty well, Danny.”
“Can’t say I’m surprised, Twilight,” he replied as the song continued. The Rainbooms had gathered next to him, sans Pinkie, watching the show. “After all, she is a siren.”
“A siren that fights evil?” Applejack scratched her head. “Can’t say I find that too shocking after what Rainbow told us.”
Normally, Danny would have been pretty upset that Rainbow had simply blabbed to everyone. Of course, this wasn’t a very normal time. “Believe me, I’d rather she hadn’t told you—”
“Aw, come on, it was just too juicy to pass up!”
“Still, one must learn to respect the privacy of their friends, dearie,” Rarity scolded her friend, who simply uttered a ‘whatever’ in response.
“Anyways…” Danny continued with a roll of his eyes. “She seems to be getting stronger, and you should have seen her back on Earth. Everyone on the planet was listening to her music non-stop.”
“Wow, that’s, uh…”
“Crazy, I know,” he finished for Sunset. Looking back to Ember, he saw her hair begin to flare up as her song entered its chorus.
“We been dancin’ with,
Mr. Brownstone…
He’s been knockin’,
He won’t leave me alooooone! No, no, no oh, he won’t leave me alone!”
Ember’s hair began to flare up even higher as she belted out the chorus, something that the Dazzlings took quick notice of.
“This is bad, she looks like she’s getting pretty strong.”
“I think Aria’s right, Adagio. Maybe we should, um… leave?” She suggested. All that did was make Adagio fume and she turned to the pair with eyes full of fire that nearly matched Ember’s hair.
“Listen, the last thing we need to do is leave when victory is just within our grasp. I don’t see either of you coming up with ideas. So until you do, I suggest you keep your mouths shut unless you truly want to see me angry!”
Adagio’s outburst made Aria and Sonata shrink back. It had been years since they’d seen her so upset, and it wasn’t something they were a fan of. The two elected to remain quiet for the rest of the song, not wanting to anger her any more than they already had.
At about that time, Ember moved her hand down the guitar neck and started to strum out a solo that enraptured the crowd. It was just as funky as the rest of the song, but at a much higher pitch, and her hair grew to practically the size of her own body as she belted it out. The students, now essentially under the control of her music, didn’t even notice it.
She couldn’t explain it herself, but somehow, her guitar playing had gotten even better. Perhaps it was the fact that she had a real musician playing alongside her, and not some simple ghost doppelgangers? Of course, there was always another possibility, one she had considered during her first performance. Maybe playing for a purpose other than self-absorption was actually helping her…
Changing her pick’s position, she scratched it against the strings a few times, bringing the solo to an end. She quickly went back into the main riff, and the song arrived at its final verse. As she sang it out, she contemplated over these thoughts. It wasn’t much longer before the song ended, and the crowd’s cheering intensified as Ember drank it all in. She walked over to Pinkie Pie and gave her a quick high-five as the duo walked back to the music hall, taking their equipment with them.
Danny and the rest of the Rainbooms were waiting backstage, and all gave a quick congratulations to Ember and Pinkie. Ember beamed, and Danny couldn’t help but feel a tinge of happiness for the girl. The show was now down to eight groups left to play, and the group decided that a break over by the punch table was a good course of action. As Danny went to follow them, he felt a hand on his shoulder holding him back.
“Hold on there, dipstick.” There was something off about her tone, but Danny couldn’t place it. The aqua-haired took a seat by the entrance to the stage, patting the floor next to her. “Sit down, there’s something I wanna talk about.”
“Lay it on me,” he replied, taking a seat next to her. He was expecting some sort of insult, or even a snide remark about the Rainbooms, but the sigh she gave surprised him.
“I never told you why I do what I do, did I?”
“All I know is that you want to be famous.” He paused for a second, trying to think of a way to word his next sentence. “I just think you went about it the wrong way.”
“I know,” she agreed, stunning him. One look at his expression made her chuckle. “Heh, you seem a little shocked.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“I wasn’t always like this. I actually used to be a lot like you.”
“A hero?”
“A loser,” she retorted jokingly. “I wasn’t a very popular girl back when I was in high school.”
“Believe me, I know what that’s like. The other students only treat me nicely because they know my alternate identity.”
“It still doesn’t make you feel welcome, does it?” She asked, having noticed the sullen look on his face.
“Not really. I’m sure I’ll be old news soon enough, and then they’ll be back to bullying me again,” he responded with a huff of breath. “Why tell me about your life, though?”
“The way I died, it… It really changed me,” she frowned, clearly bothered by memories of the incident.
“What happened?”
Ember took a moment, and Danny could tell that she was conflicted about telling him. Before he could tell her it was alright not to, though, she started talking again. “Like I said, I was pretty unpopular in high school. Got picked on a lot, beaten up, the basics. I thought my life was over before it even began.
“But then my dad took me to a concert. The headliner was Aerosmith, and I got to meet Joe Perry of all people,” she beamed. “He told me I could be whatever I wanted. That I should ignore all the other kids at my school. From that day on, I decided that I was going to be the biggest rock star on the planet.”
“I’d say you accomplished your goal, even if it was pretty short-lived,” Danny smiled.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She offered up the tiniest of smiles, then continued her tale. “Anyways, I had my own guitar custom-built and everything. Saved up months of allowances to afford it,” she laughed. “Most kids begged their parents for an Atari, but I wanted something that would last me forever.
“Some boy, a guy I had a huge crush on, eventually asked me to go to the movies with him. I thought that I had finally become a popular girl, the kind other girls would be jealous of. I was wrong.” She paused for a moment, trying to gain her composure. With a deep breath, she carried on. “The boy never showed up. I stayed there all night waiting for him. I guess I was trying to convince myself that he was just running late.”
“What a jerk,” Danny replied, a hint of anger in his voice. “Why the heck do some kids have to act so mean to everyone?”
“I don’t know, but it really got to me. I ended up going home and crying myself to sleep. I guess I was pretty tired because I never even heard the alarm go off.”
“Wait. The alarm? Was your house robbed or something?” Ember said nothing more. Instead, she lifted a hand up and pointed at her hair. Almost immediately, Danny felt like a fool. “Oh…”
“Yeah. The next time I woke up, I was in the Ghost Zone,” she ended her story morosely. The two didn’t say anything for a couple minutes, and Ember grew tired of the moody atmosphere. “But hey, you were right. I did it, even if it was as a ghost.”
Danny returned the smile she bore, but still had one question left to ask her. “But still, why tell me all of this? I’m sure there was some underlying point to all of it that I’m not getting.”
Ember laughed. “Man, you really are a dipstick. I told you because I know what I want to be now, after all these years. I wanna be someone that helps people with her music. Not hurts them.”
Danny didn’t say anything, but she could see the faintest of smirks on his face.
“What’s with the smirk?”
“If what you’re saying is true, I’m just glad I won’t have to fight you anymore,” he laughed, taking off towards the punch table as she tried to take a playful swing at him. Maybe this whole adventure hadn’t been pointless.
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Cool backstory.
7092025 And you didn't include anything from the Box Ghost to celebrate the feature BOX?
Alot of the ghosts have sad backstories and would definitely love to see nick bring the series back for some redemption arcs. But this is amazing.
Keep up the good work
7092146 7092108 Thank you! I feel like there's a lot of characters who clearly have a tragic backstory from Danny Phantom, and that was the one thing the show did very poorly: backstory.
7092141 Yep, now I basically have to put that in some sort of bonus chapter
7092753 Yep, your welcome. And this is a good redemption of Ember, probably the ghost most likely to get a redemption if they ever were to have done that.
It's pretty obvious, the siren sister's MO was to drive people apart, While Ember's methods are to bring them together.
Very interesting story and interesting back story for Ember... Though I don't know how will the approach they are going to use will work. Considering every ghost knows Danny holds to his word. Which could be a bad thing for him, if skulker wasn't so adamant on catching Danny in a hunt. The times they worked together would have gotten Danny caught. Guess they have some honor to their words kind of thing going on. Though Ember could play them. Who knows can't wait till next Chapter.
7092753 Oh wow you updated when I posted. You're welcome?
That was a good chapter. I really liked Ember's backstory.
I thought she died in a car accident with her boy friend, fred was it?
To convert her our cause, Aria
1. Shouldn't it be; To convert her to our cause?
I don't get it
11092225
A smoke alarm lol, her hair is fire
I wanna see Aria and Sonata join Ember
Huh, so Ember had parents...I wonder where they are now?
Honestly surprised by the parents thing, my version of her backstory has her as an orphan who was never adopted. I thought it would really fit her obsession for fame and the fans screaming her name (heh, rhymes), since she never had family love along with friend love.